Of Interest

With our troops, with our allies, and with the brave Iraqis, we look forward to a new birth of freedom in Iraq; and want to do what we can to show our soldiers, our allies, and — most importantly — the Iraqis, that we stand with them as they stand for themselves.

Starting on Monday, December 12th, I — and tens of thousands of others across America — will be marking my right index finger with purple ink to show those in Iraq we support them. Based on suggestions from listeners on my nationally syndicated radio show, I — and we — are asking you (to the degree physically feasible) to make available an ink pad or marker at your check-out counters for your customers, to mark their fingers with ink as they leave your store.

…

Let us all look forward to a day when all men, women, and children can live in freedom. Until then, let us do what we can for those that we can.

Indeed. Will you be painting your finger purple? If so, drop us a photo. We love everything purple here at EphBlog.

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5 Responses to “Purple Fingers”

Anonymous says:

Would Mr. Bennett suggest also that we dip our fingers in red ink to thank millions of aborted black babies for reducing the U.S. crime rate? Perhaps the former education secretary should focus on ensuring that American children can live in freedom from racist comments like those before he begins sermonizing about the birth of a new freedom in far away desert lands.

I am no fan of William Bennett. Anyone who presumes to right a “book of virtues” telling the rest of us how to live our lives better make damn sure that he has his own house in order. (See also, Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh). But, he is not racist and you are taking his comment way out of context. He was playing devil’s advocate in OPPOSING those who suggest that abortion might be a way to cure particular social ills. Also, he immediately referred to such an idea as morally reprehensible. If someone says, “we could imprison all Arabs to eliminate potential terrorists, but that would be morally reprehensible and repugnant and would not accomplish the goal in any event” would that make them racist? I don’t think so. That was essentially the jist of Bennett’s point, although he could have stated it far more artfully. Also, he was referring to research conducted by the Freakonomics economist S. Leavitt, who reached not exactly the same conclusion, but he did conclude (apparently, in a conclusion Bennett did not endorse) that low-income single parent women having abortions en masss in the 70’s had lowered the crime rate two decades later. Obviously, there is a correlation between low-income single parent women and african-americans, so, if one were to take a dramatic devil’s advocate approach to critiquing a defender of abortion as a social policy mechanism, you could say, hey, aren’t you basically saying, aborting black babies will lower the crime rate? To me, that was clearly Bennett’s aim, he was referring to another’s research not reaching any conclusion, let alone endorsing such a tactic. Calling him racist based on those comments is just totally off-base. Doesn’t mean he isn’t a prig, but you (and the media) shouldn’t toss the racist label around so carelessly. Let’s save it for the real culprits like the “unknown” (aka Karl Rove) GOP strategists who used push polling to make voters believe that John McCain had an illigitimate black baby, or folks like Trent Lott who believed that a virulently anti-gay segregationist candidate who hid his own black child for 80 years out of embarassment would have made a great president.

I should add that I don’t actually believe Lott and Rove are racist, in that they don’t have systematic animus towards blacks. I just believe Lott is racially insenstive (particularly for someone in his position), and Rove will do anything, morally repugnant or not, to enable his candidate’s victory, including using race as a tool in evil ways.

Would someone please define “racist” for me? I don’t know what it means except that I do note that you sleazy politicos (isn’t using “sleazy” to modify “politico” redundant?) often throw it around promiscuously to make demagogic points!